Stacia Misner - Introducing Microsoft SQL Server 2012

PUBLISHED BY
Microsoft Press
A Division of Microsoft Corporation
One Microsoft Way
Redmond, Washington 98052-6399

Copyright 2012 by Microsoft Corporation

All rights reserved. No part of the contents of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means without the written permission of the publisher.

Library of Congress Control Number: 2012933508
ISBN: 978-0-7356-6515-6

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I dedicate this book to my wife, Sherry. Thank you for being one of the only people in my life who has always been there for me regardless of the situation and has never let me down. I am greatly appreciative.

ROSS MISTRY

I dedicate this book to my husband and best friend, Gerry, who excels at keeping our dreams alive.

STACIA MISNER

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Microsoft SQL Server 2012 is Microsofts first cloud-ready information platform. It gives organizations effective tools to protect, unlock, and scale the power of their data, and it works across a variety of devices and data sources, from desktops, phones, and tablets, to datacenters and both private and public clouds. Our purpose in Introducing Microsoft SQL Server 2012 is to point out both the new and the improved capabilities as they apply to achieving mission-critical confidence, breakthrough insight, and using a cloud on your terms.

As you read this book, we think you will find that there are a lot of exciting enhancements and new capabilities engineered into SQL Server 2012 that allow you to greatly enhance performance and availability at a low total cost of ownership, unlock new insights with pervasive data discovery across the organization and create business solutions faston your terms.

This book is for anyone who has an interest in SQL Server 2012 and wants to understand its capabilities. In a book of this size, we cannot cover every feature that distinguishes SQL Server from other databases or previous versions, and consequently we assume you have some familiarity with SQL Server already. You might be a database administrator (DBA), an application developer, a business intelligence solution architect, a power user, or a technical decision maker. Regardless of your role, we hope you can use this book to discover the features in SQL Server 2012 that are most beneficial to you.

This book expects that you have at least a minimal understanding of SQL Server from both a database administrators perspective and business-intelligence perspective. This also includes an understanding of the components associated with the product, such as the Database Engine, Analysis Services, Reporting Services, and Integration Services.

As mentioned earlier, the purpose of this book is to provide the reader with a high-level preview of the capabilities and features associated with SQL Server 2012. This book is not intended to be a step-by-step comprehensive guide. Moreover, there have been over 250 new improvements associated with the product; therefore, the book may not cover every improvement in its entirety.

SQL Server 2012, like its predecessors, is more than a database engine. It is a collection of components you can implement either separately or as a group to form a scalable, cloud-ready information platform. In broad terms, this cloud-ready information platform consists of two categories: those that help you manage data and those that help you deliver business intelligence (BI). Accordingly, we divided this book into two parts to focus on the new capabilities for each of these areas.

discusses the new beyond-relational enhancements positively impacting unstructured data, including refinements to existing technology features such as full-text search, spatial data, and FILESTREAM, as well as brand new capabilities like FileTables and statistical semantic search.

covers the improvements in SharePoint integration and details the self-service capabilities available with the new ad hoc reporting tool, Power View.

This book presents information using the following conventions, which are designed to make the information more readable and easy to follow:

• Each exercise consists of a series of tasks, presented as numbered steps (1, 2, and so on) listing each action you must take to complete the exercise.
• Boxed elements with labels such as Note provide additional information or alternative methods for completing a step successfully.
• Text that you type (apart from code blocks) appears in bold.
• Transact-SQL code is used to help you further understand a specific example.

To help you get familiar with SQL Server 2012 as early as possible after its release, we wrote this book using examples that work with the Release Candidate 0 (RC0) version of the product. Consequently, the final version might include new features, and features we discuss might change or disappear. Refer to the Whats New in SQL Server 2012 topic in Books Online for SQL Server at http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms130214%28v=sql.110%29.aspx for the most up-to-date list of changes to the product. Be aware that you might also notice some minor differences between the RTM version of the product and the descriptions and screen shots that we provide.

First, I would like to thank my colleagues at Microsoft Press and OReilly Media for providing me with another great authorship opportunity and putting together a stellar product in such a short period of time. Special thanks goes out to Devon Musgrave, Colin Lyth, Karen Szall, Carol Dillingham, Steve Sagman, Mitch Tulloch, Roger LeBlanc, Christina Yeager, Anne Hamilton, Steve Weiss, and Ken Jones. The publishing teams support throughout this engagement is much appreciated.